An pneumatically driven liquified gas booster pump, more specifically described as a gas booster pump in which a shuttle valve is enclosed within the body of the pump and in which the driven or boosted gas is carried from an inlet to an outlet while entirely within the body of the pump. cl BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Applicant provides novelty in a liquified booster pump. The function of a booster pump is to take high pressure gas and boost it to a higher pressure. This is sometimes beneficial in handling liquified gas such as liquified CO2 or NO2 in the fire extinguishing industry, air conditioning industry, paint ball, beverage, automotive, motorcycle and industrial gas industry.
All booster pumps have a high pressure inlet and a higher pressure (boosted) outlet. All booster pumps contain some sort of check valves. Some booster pumps use a double acting piston which boosts the inlet pressure on both strokes (2 boosts or 2 strokes in one complete cycle). With a balanced pump, working on both strokes of the same cycle, greater efficiency is typically realized.
Applicant""s pneumatically driven liquified gas booster pump includes a piston body which piston body includes a shuttle valve enclosed within the body for controlling the drive gas and also includes internal boosted gas supply and transfer passages. Prior art booster pumps would typically have external boosted gas supply passages and external shuttle valves. Applicants booster pump also includes unique cartridge style double check valves within the body thereof for moving the gas to be boosted from an inlet to an outlet.
The way in which Applicant""s booster pump works is that a piston is driven by a drive gas, which piston engages a pair of chambers in fluid communication with the gas to be boosted. On a double acting, balanced booster pump the drive gas is shuttled from one side to the other side of the primary piston. A primary piston face, is say, 4 sq. inches. The secondary or booster piston faces are smaller, say 1 sq.inch, resulting in a quadrupling of the force applied to the primary piston face. For example, if the drive gas pressure is 100 p.s.i. acting on 4 sq.inches of primary piston face, an increase to 400 p.s.i. is realized on the boosted gas.
Applicant uses a cartridge style double check valve that encloses the springs, balls and other elements of the double check valve within a cartridge, which cartridge will drop into the housing with xe2x80x9coxe2x80x9d rings between the body of the booster pump and the double acting check valve so that all the gas must flow through the body of the double check valve. This saves machining on the body of the pump.
Applicant also provides an externally or manually operated shuttle valve reset assembly in case the shuttle valve is locked in an xe2x80x9cin betweenxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cstalledxe2x80x9d position, and provides also a momentary on-off switch.
Applicant further provides, as part of a booster pump system, a fill valve, to provide boosted gas pressure to a container such as a fire extinguisher cylinder.
Large tanks of high pressure liquified gas, called mother tanks, are often used to fill smaller tanks, or nurse tanks. For example, a mother tank of CO2 may be used to fill many smaller fire extinguishers. Likewise, a large NO2 tank may be used to fill many smaller NO2 tnaks.
In such a system, the weight of the nurse bottle is often used to determine if it has been filled. For example, it may be known that a specific bottle type will weight 15 Lbs. when filled with NO2. When being filled from a mother bottle a booster pump may be used between the mother bottle and the nurse bottle. Periodic weighing of the nurse bottle during the filling process is required, often with the operator visually reading the weight from a scale and adding more gas as needed.
Applicant has further provided a consolidated system by joining a scale with a meter head display, in a package with the booster, hoses and valve.